{"id":42852,"date":"2024-05-29T16:46:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T16:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=42852"},"modified":"2024-05-29T16:46:58","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T16:46:58","slug":"belgian-police-search-eu-parliament-office-over-russian-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/05\/29\/belgian-police-search-eu-parliament-office-over-russian-interference\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgian police search EU parliament office over Russian interference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Belgian police have searched the European parliament office and Brussels home of a parliamentary staffer who is believed to have played \u201ca significant role\u201d in a Russian interference operation, the national prosecutor has said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">French authorities also carried out a search of the employee\u2019s European parliament office in Strasbourg at the request of the Belgian examining magistrate overseeing the inquiry into corruption and Russian interference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The case is part of a Belgian investigation announced last month into alleged payments to MEPs to promote Russian propaganda on the Voice of Europe website. The searches come just over a week before elections to the European parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After a Czech investigation into the Prague-based website, Belgium\u2019s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said last month\u00a0a pro-Russian interference network was active\u00a0in several European countries, including Belgium. The objective, he added, was to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European parliament in next week\u2019s elections and reinforce \u201ca certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a statement on Wednesday, Belgium\u2019s federal public prosecutor\u2019s office said the searches were part of \u201ca case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organisation and relates to indications of Russian interference\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2024\/may\/29\/russia-ukraine-war-live-blinken-moldova-macron\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A spokesperson for the prosecutor\u2019s office declined to name the suspect, citing the standard practice of secrecy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Citing sources close to the inquiry, Belgian media named the suspect as Guillaume Pradoura, who they said was the former assistant of Maximilian Krah, the lead candidate for Germany\u2019s Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland party who recently\u00a0resigned from the far-right party\u2019s leadership over comments about the SS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belgian police have searched the European parliament office and Brussels home of a parliamentary staffer who is believed to have played \u201ca significant role\u201d in a Russian interference operation, the national prosecutor has said. French authorities also carried out a search of the employee\u2019s European parliament office in Strasbourg at the request of the Belgian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":42853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6942,1904,7960,1384,10391,159,6621,9505,2404,6351,66,10197,3874,9974,1198,421,3174,12526,6014,3457,5217,7052,594],"class_list":["post-42852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-case","tag-corruption","tag-declined","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-parliament","tag-french","tag-germany","tag-investigation","tag-lead","tag-leadership","tag-parliament","tag-police","tag-prime-minister","tag-pro-russian","tag-propaganda","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-strasbourg","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42854,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42852\/revisions\/42854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}